Last week, Super League clubs released their full sets of fixtures for the 2026 season, and some of the teams were at their creative best as they thought of new and exciting ways to reveal the team’ schedules for next season.
Teams in the top flight offered a range of ways to announce their fixtures for the upcoming year, with some making use of viral memes, some mocking famous skits, and others using their players, as well as the local community, to help create an intriguing and engaging way of releasing when they will play each opponent next season.
It was revealed by Owen Ward, a member of Wakefield Trinity’s media team who also makes rugby league content on his own social channel at the username @pitchsideguy, that clubs were given an initiative by the RFL to create the best video for the fixture releases, in order to once again try and bring fresh eyes to the sport and allow for a wider range of people to take an interest in rugby league.
“It was fixture release this week in Super League, and what most people in the general public won’t know, is that there was actually an RFL initiative to produce the best fixture release video across the league.” Ward confirmed, as he went on to give his top three videos across the competition.
With that being said, here is how every club decided to reveal their 2026 Super League fixtures.
Starting with Ward’s Wakefield, they opted to use hit BBC show Celebrity Traitors in their video, with the stars of the programme opening envelopes to reveal when the Trinity played each team.
Sticking with TV shows, Champions Hull KR opted for a ‘Stranger Things’ theme, following the release of the new series on Netflix.
Bradford Bulls, who will be back in the division for the first time in 12 seasons, opted to use a local school for their release, and got pupils from Holybrook Primary School to guess the name of the team based on the badge alone. Some hilarious answers were given, including ‘Dragons Wheels’ for York Knights and ‘The Hairy Guy’ for Wigan Warriors.
Sticking with the other newbies in the league, York opted for a Spotify playlist and skipped through songs relating to each team. The likes of ‘Erasure’, ‘Marching on Together’ and ‘When the Saints go marching in’ were all featured, as Mark Applegarth’s side prepare for their first ever Super League campaign. Toulouse Olympique are back in the division for the first time since 2022, as they decided to let their media ‘intern’ take the reigns.
Hull FC played a game of ‘guess the gibberish’, as players tried to guess which teams they would be facing from phrases that were purposely difficult to pronounce. ‘Vegan Worry Years’ for Wigan, as an example.
Speaking of the Warriors, they decided to test their team’s artistic skills, and got players to ‘draw’ the stadium of every other club in the league. Catalans Dragons created their own ‘Monopoly’ game, with each fixture sitting chronologically around the board.
Warrington Wolves had arguably one of the best release videos, as they created their own version of the infamous ‘Mitchell and Webb’ skit, where they preview the weekend’s fixtures. Getting comedian Pete Emmett to act as David Mitchell, fans of all clubs have gone on to applaud the Wolves media team for their creative idea.
St Helens continued their 1996-inspired season, as they brought former player Alan Hunte in to help reveal the schedule. All their fixtures were then put out on a teletext-style graphic, as they stuck with the retro theme. Leeds Rhinos got their players to wear some fancy dress and take on the ‘Otley Run’, an infamous pub crawl that is located in Headingley.
Huddersfield Giants went through their dates for 2026 by picking a viral clip that linked to each team. The club recently released the stats behind their release video, as it reached a quarter of a million views and 15,000 engagements on all platforms.
Finally, both Leigh Leopards and Castleford Tigers didn’t produce a video to announce the 2026 line-up, and instead just released a graphic highlighting when each game will be played.
